A storage area network (SAN) is used to connect host devices (e.g., servers, computers, etc.) to one or more shared storage devices. Fibre (Fiber) Channel (FC) is a high-speed network technology and protocol suite used to implement SANs. A purpose of the FC protocol suite is to efficiently manage large numbers of storage devices using serial interfaces operating over optical or electrical interfaces. FC provides an efficient and dependable means for transferring data between workstations, mainframes, supercomputers, desktop computers, and storage devices.
The network portion of a SAN based on Fibre Channel is called a FC switched fabric (also referred to herein as a FC Fabric). A FC switched fabric comprises one or more FC switches that are deployed to direct traffic between the host devices and the storage devices. The host devices perform computations and/or provide services, usually through a network connection to a wide area network (WAN) (e.g., the Internet, Intranet, etc.) or a local area network (LAN).